Health Innovation East Digital Hub launches third cohort, powered by Cogniss
Following their two successful cohorts, the Health Innovation East Digital Health Hub has officially launched its third cohort of digital health innovators. Powered by Cogniss’s no-code platform, this programme empowers clinicians, academics and SMEs to develop impactful patient-facing app solutions for the NHS and beyond.
Each innovator in the programme receives a fully funded six-month package that includes app development, testing and validation. Using Cogniss’s no-code platform, participants can transform their ideas into working digital health solutions ready for real-world implementation.
This third cohort marks a record for the Digital Health Hub, with 12 participants selected following the highest number of applications to date. The group brings together innovators from six NHS Trusts: The Royal Wolverhampton, Manchester University, Cambridge University Hospitals (2 teams), Sussex Community and Portsmouth Hospitals University, as well as the NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service (SPS). Seven of these participants are also fellows of the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP). Additionally, academics join from the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University.
Their projects span diverse healthcare challenges, from an evidence-based app for caregivers of neurodivergent children to an app to support people with eating disorders:
Grounded Birth delivers comprehensive trauma-informed antenatal education that prepares parents physically, emotionally and psychologically for all kinds of birth experiences, especially unexpected or complex ones.
iRise and Raise empowers parents and caregivers of neurodivergent children with evidence-informed tools, resilience-building strategies and emotional regulation techniques to navigate daily changes and manage stress.
Dysphagia High Technologies is an education platform that raises awareness of dysphagia risks through videos of real-life scenarios, promoting timely referrals and treatment.
Clarity equips clinicians to explain emergency surgical diagnoses and procedures to patients with limited English proficiency or low health literacy using short, multilingual animated videos, at the bedside, in clinics, or preoperatively.
Her Health Room provides a healthcare model that combines digital solutions and in-person care for recovery from birth to two years, starting with a self-assessment that unlocks personalized plans for lifelong health.
Nourish Our Future is a practical and accessible nutrition guidance app for early years settings and parents. It builds on the Nourishing Our Future (NOF) project, which found that early years carers lack the funding, training and resources needed for children’s nutrition..
Cuddle Time is an app for parents and carers in the NICU to record, track and engage with Kangaroo Care sessions for late preterm infants to strengthen bonding and developmental outcomes.
MyBingeBreaker is a patient-facing app to support people with binge eating disorder (BED) and bulimia, removing key barriers to accessing and seeking treatment.
Dottir is a dual-purpose platform for interventional radiology that enhances patient understanding through video-based digital consent and supports clinicians with concise microlearning and microcredentials.
Therapy Forms is a web-based platform that centralises high-quality digital resources, including forms, diagrams and therapeutic models for therapists to use alongside virtual sessions, improving efficiency and consistency.
AseptiQ is an app that standardises training for aseptic services through workplace-based video demonstrations of essential procedures such as handwashing, gowning and no-touch technique.
PACE is a holistic rehabilitation app that integrates prehabilitation, in-treatment and recovery support into standard cancer care pathways, tailoring interventions to individual needs.
The Digital Health Hub was highly commended at the HTN Now Awards 2025 in the Health Tech Team of the Year category. This recognition reflects the strength of the partnership between Health Innovation East and Cogniss and the programme’s growing establishment as a proven model, demonstrated by record applications and the largest cohort to date.
The Cogniss platform contains more than 100 pre-built features as building blocks to enable the creation and iteration of sophisticated patient-facing digital health apps. Beyond development, Cogniss also simplifies the compliance, interoperability and distribution of health apps, resulting in a much more efficient procurement pathway for compliant patient-centric solutions.
Joanna Dempsey, Commercial Enterprise Lead at Health Innovation East, said:
“This is a great opportunity for innovators to bring their app ideas to life quickly and with expert support. Using the tools from Cogniss, they can rapidly develop and test solutions, while also ensuring digital compliance.”
Lloyd Humphreys, Managing Director at Cogniss, added:
“Previous cohorts have already shown the power of the Cogniss no-code platform in rapidly turning ideas into digital health solutions ready for piloting across the NHS. With Cohort 3, we’re excited to take this even further and continue expanding the Cogniss app marketplace with new innovations.”
Following the programme, apps can be published as standalone solutions, becoming available via the web or app stores or remain within the Digital Health Hub ecosystem, ready for further development or funding.
With the programme now well-established and Cohort 3 commencing, the Digital Health Hub is proving to be a replicable and scalable model for digital innovation in healthcare, bringing better tools to patients and professionals who need them most.
About Cogniss
Cogniss is a no-code ecosystem that enables healthcare experts and organisations to create advanced patient-facing digital health apps without any need for coding. Its unique point-and-click interface empowers healthcare innovators to build highly customized apps, at a fraction of the time and cost required by traditional code-based development.
About Health Innovation East
We believe that great ideas only make a difference for our health when they are put into practice. We are a team of expert advisors and programme leaders passionate about helping the best innovations in health and care reach the people, places and problems where they bring the most benefit. As the regional innovation arm of the NHS, our collective skillset and work are at the forefront of the advances being made across health and care. We work on technology-enabled change programmes and improve care pathways alongside clinicians and managers. We also support the health and life sciences industry to position products for use across the healthcare system.